I’m a brand new CNA in a city hospital and one of the conditions of my hire is that I will be a 1:1 sitter for the ED’s psych patients (that are almost always SI, aggression, or dementia/confusion) for at least 2mo.

I’m 3 weeks in to sitting, and almost got bodied today by a schizophrenia patient who went from blacked out asleep and non-verbal for the 30min I had been sitting for her, to running away at mach 5 and bodying a security guard, and completely ignoring my pleas to go back to her room. Shit meet fan. I had no way of getting through to her from the beginning, and she spent the rest of our 1:1 time cursing me with Dante’s Inferno level curses: to have Satan shave my head bald and that I would cry tears of blood in hell and melt in the pools of magma despair. Obviously her personal sleep paralysis demon staring at her and being unable to speak out of fear/lack of training was not conducive to her patient experience.

All of my 1:1s are uncomfortable with a sleep paralysis demon lady in their doorway staring at them for 8hr and we either make wonderful convo or we stare at eachother and try mot to make eye contact. Twice it’s gotten violent and I had absolutely no way of deescalating outside of pressing the oh shit button and having security come 1-4min later. I’m scared more than anything but I also want to be compassionate. I know that screaming at pt doesn’t work, and neither does chasing or freezing in fear.

Are there any books, videos etc I should read? I just want to know how to try and deescalate, how to communicate with psych patients respectfully and at their level.